Democratic Party

Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Coleman Young arrived in Detroit, Michigan with his family when he was five. The Colemans settled in the working class neighborhood of Black Bottom (East Detroit), where his father operated a dry cleaning business and his mother was a schoolteacher. Early in his life Coleman suffered various forms of racial discrimination from denial of scholarships to a racially motivated firing at an automobile plant.

Albert Cleage, jr., or Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, Black Nationalist and civil rightsactivist, was one of the most prominent black religious leaders in America. Agyemen preached a form of nationalism within the black community that stressed economic self-sufficiency and separation that relied on a religious awakening among black people.

Albert Cleage, Jr. was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on June 13, 1911. Cleage graduated from Wayne State University in Michigan in 1937, earning a B.A. in sociology, and a M.A. in Divinity from Oberlin School of Theology in 1943. Cleage married Doris Graham and had two daughters. Cleage and Graham later divorced in 1955. Cleage ran for governor of Michigan in 1962 under the Freedom Now Party, and was a candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Representative from Michigan, 13th District, in 1966. Cleage later changed his name to Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman.

Young was born into a prosperous upper-middle-class family on March 12, 1932 in New Orleans, Louisiana to Daisy Fuller, a school teacher, and Andrew Jackson Young, Sr., a Howard University-educated dentist. Young, Sr. moved the family from Franklin, Louisiana to New Orleans. Young, Sr., believed the move was necessary to take advantage of educational opportunities for Andrew and his younger brother Walter Young (b. 1934).

Seaborn J. Collins was born and raised in Georgia. He migrated to Seattle, Washington with his wife Alzada and son William in 1885, where he worked as a mechanic and a carpenter. Collins also invested in local real estate. In 1888 Collins bought property in the Yesler neighborhood, and built a two-story house on the property valued at $1,000. Three years later, the Collins family became the first African Americans to move to the Madison District, a middle class suburban community on the northeastern edge of Seattle.

Collins was a charter member of the First African American Republican Club, and in 1892 he was nominated to run as the Republican nominee for the office of wreckmaster. He defeated Democratic nominee John A. Coleman and became the first African American elected official in King County.

Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States and the first African American to occupy the White House. Obama was born August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was a Kenyan graduate student studying in the United States and his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas. The two were married on February 2, 1961 in Maui, Hawaii. In 1971, when he was ten, Obama’s mother, who had remarried and was living in Indonesia, sent him to Honolulu, Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents Madelyn and Stanley Dunham for several years, where he attended Punahou, a prestigious preparatory school. Obama was admitted on a scholarship with the assistance of his grandparents.

George L. Vaughn was a black lawyer and civic leader in St. Louis, Missouri best known for representing J.D. Shelley and Herman Willer in the landmark civil rights case Shelley v. Kraemer (1948). Born to former slaves and raised in Kentucky, Vaughn graduated from Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, and earned a law degree from Walden University in Nashville, Tennessee. After serving in the Army as first lieutenant in World War I, he practiced law in St. Louis. Vaughn was a prominent member of the Democratic Party in the 1930s and 1940s and a Justice of the Peace in St. Louis in 1936.

Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s important 1948 decision, restrictive covenants entered into by real estate associations legalized residential segregation. In 1945, J.D. Shelley purchased a home in St. Louis and moved in with his family. An outraged association of white homeowners served an eviction notice on Shelley. Vaughn was hired by an association of African American real estate brokers to represent Shelley. The case went to the Missouri Supreme Court which upheld the validity of the restrictive covenant. Vaughn, with the backing of the African American real estate brokers, petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal. During the oral argument, Vaughn challenged these restrictive covenants as “the Achilles heel” of U.S. democracy. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed and ruled that state courts could not enforce racially restrictive covenants, because they violated the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment which guaranteed “the right of a citizen to purchase and dispose of property.”

Walter Moses Burton holds the distinction of being the first black elected sheriff in the United States. Burton was also a State Senator in Texas.

Burton was brought to Fort Bend County, Texas as a slave from North Carolina in 1850 at the age of twenty-one. While enslaved, he was taught how to read and write by his master, Thomas Burton. After the Civil War his former owner sold Burton several large plots of land for $1,900 making him one of the wealthiest and most influential blacks in Fort Bend County. In 1869, Walter Burton was elected sheriff and tax collector of Fort Bend County. Along with these duties, he also served as the president of the Fort Bend County Union League.

Jack Tanner was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1919. His father, Ernie Tanner, was a respected local leader in the Tacoma local of the International Longshoremen’s Union, an organization that Jack Tanner eventually joined when he worked on the city’s docks. Before joining the union, however, Tanner was a star student-athlete at Stadium High School in Tacoma. Upon graduation he joined the U.S. Army in World War II and served in the Pacific in a segregated unit, an experience that provided this Pacific Northwest native his first view of racial discrimination as it was practiced in much of the United States. That view would influence Tanner’s actions as a lawyer and later as a federal judge.

When he returned from World War II Tanner enrolled in the College of Puget Sound while working on the docks. Upon graduation he enrolled in the University of Washington Law School and received a J.D. degree in 1955. In the early 1950s Tanner was the only African American enrolled in the law school. Even after passing the bar Tanner kept his longshore job because the prospects for black attorneys in the Tacoma area in the 1950s were slim.

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm, an advocate for the rights of people of color and for women's rights, became in November 1968 the first black woman elected to the United States Congress. Four years later she became the first black person to seek a major party’s nomination for the U.S. presidency when she ran for the Democratic Party nomination.

Chisholm represented New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and when initially elected, was assigned to the House Agriculture Committee, which she felt was irrelevant to her urban constituency. In an unheard-of move, she demanded reassignment and got switched to the Veterans Affairs Committee. By the time she left that chamber, she had held a place on the prized Rules and Education and Labor Committees.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a grass-roots civil rights activist whose life exemplified resistance in rural Mississippi to oppressive conditions. Born on October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi, to a family of sharecroppers, she was the youngest of Lou Ella and Jim Townsend’s twenty children. Her family moved to Sunflower County, Mississippi in 1919 to work on the E. W. Brandon plantation.

Marjorie Edwina Pitter King, the youngest of the Pitter sisters, was born March 8, 1921, to Edward A. Pitter and Marjorie Allen Pitter, in Seattle, Washington. When she graduated from Garfield High School, she joined her sisters at the University of Washington to study for an accounting degree in the College of Economics and Business. Like her father, she had a passion for numbers, business and the value of a dollar. So, to help the family with college expenses for her and her sisters, she came up with an entrepreneurial venture called “Tres Hermanas,” or “Three Sisters.” Together they earned money by typing, printing and writing speeches to help pay for their books, tuition and the like. Aside from having fun with her sisters, she enjoyed herself at the University. She worked for a sociology professor who counseled students in and outside of his discipline, including Pitter (later King). According to her, he always seemed to have a receptive ear for her concerns and tried to advise her as best he could, knowing little about her major. Commercial Law, Anthropology and Statistics were her three most enjoyable courses, because of the creative manner in which they were taught—interactive, with a team approach.

Sources:

Juana R. Royster Horn, “The Academic and Extracurricular Undergraduate Experiences of Three Black Women At The University of Washington 1935 to 1941,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington, 1980).

Ronald Vernie Dellums was born on November 24, 1935 in Oakland, California to Willa Terry Dellums and Vernie Dellums. His father Vernie Dellums was a longshoreman, and his mother was a labor organizer. As a child, Ron attended St. Patrick Catholic School in Oakland.

After high school Ron Dellums served in the United States Marine Corps from 1954 to 1956 after he was denied the college scholarship he had sought. After service in the Marines Dellums, with the help of the G.I Bill and an outside job, attended San Francisco State College where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1960. This was followed by an M.A. in Social Welfare from the University of California at Berkeley in 1962.

In the same year Dellums began his career as a psychiatric social worker in the California Department of Mental Hygiene in Berkeley. Dellums also taught at San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley. His work soon led him to become involved in community politics. In 1967 at 32, Dellums was elected to the Berkeley City Council. He quickly became known as the spokesperson for African American community affairs and for his radical political beliefs.

John Conyers, Jr. was born on May 16, 1929 in Detroit, Michigan. He attended public schools and graduated in 1947 from Northwestern High School. After high school, he followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the United Automobile Workers Union (UAW). Conyers worked for the Lincoln Car Factory, where he became a director of education for UAW Local 900.

Conyers enlisted in the United States Army in August 1950 and became a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. He was discharged from the army in 1954 after seeing combat in the Korean War.

Conyers returned to Wayne Sate University where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1957, and a Juris Doctor degree in 1958 from Wayne State University’s School of Law. After passing the bar in 1959 Conyers began practicing law in his hometown, Detroit, Michigan.

His brief stint in private practice was interrupted in 1958 when he became a legislative assistant to Fifteenth District Michigan Congressman John Dingell, Jr. Conyers worked for Dingell until 1961 and then became a referee for the Michigan Workmen’s Compensation Department. With the support of Congressman Dingell, 35-year-old John Conyers was elected to the United States Congress in 1964, representing Michigan’s Fourteenth Congressional District.

Born in Harlem, New York in 1935, Robert Parris Moses first appeared on the civil rights scene during the 1960s. After being inspired by a meeting with Ella Baker and being moved by the student sit-ins, as well as the Civil Rights fervor in the South, he joined the movement. His first involvement came with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) where he organized a youth march in Atlanta to promote integrated education. In 1960 Moses joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and two years later became strategic coordinator and project director with the newly formed Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) which worked in Mississippi. In 1963 Moses led the voter registration campaign in the Freedom Summer movement. The following year he helped form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which tried to replace the segregationist-dominated Mississippi Democratic Party delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Moses left SNCC after the organization embraced “black power” under its new chairman, Stokely Carmichael.

Miss. Freedom Democratic Party State Convention,
Jackson, Mississippi, July 1964

Image Courtesy of David Walters, Holt Labor Library,

Labor Studies and Radical History

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was founded on April 26, 1964 as part of a voter registration project for African Americans in the state. For over half a century Mississippi blacks had attempted to attend regular Democratic Party meetings and conventions but were continually denied entry. They formed the MFDP, which welcomed both whites and blacks, to run several candidates for the Senate and Congressional elections on June 2, 1964.

Alphonso Michael Espy in 1986 became the first black Congressman elected from Mississippi since John R. Lynch, who served during Reconstruction. He was also the first African American to hold the post of Secretary of Agriculture. Mike Espy was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi. He received a B.A. from Howard University in 1975 and then attended law school at the University of Santa Clara where he received his J.D. degree in 1978. Espy returned to Mississippi after law school and worked as an attorney for Central Mississippi Legal Services from 1978 to 1980. Between 1980 and 1984 Espy served as assistant secretary of the Public Lands Division for the State of Mississippi and then took the post of assistant State Attorney General for Consumer Protection, a position he held until 1985.

In 1989, David N. Dinkins defeated his challenger, former federal prosecutor Rudolph (Rudy) Giuliani, to become the first African American mayor of New York City.

David Norman Dinkins was born in Trenton, New Jersey in 1927. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Marine Corps at 18 and served briefly in World War II. After the war, he attended Howard University, graduating with a B.A. in Mathematics in 1950. Dinkins moved to New York City and received a law degree from the Brooklyn Law School in 1956. Dinkins is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.

David Dinkins’s political career began when he joined the Carver Club headed by a charismatic politician, J. Raymond Jones who was known as the Harlem Fox. Dinkins befriended three up and coming black New York politicians; Charles Rangel, Basil Paterson, Sr., and Percy Sutton. In 1965, Dinkins won his first electoral office, a seat in the New York State Assembly. Shortly afterwards Dinkins was offered the position of deputy mayor of New York by then Mayor Abraham Beam. Dinkins could not accept the post when it was revealed he had not paid income taxes for the past four years.

Born Perle Yvonne Watson on October 5, 1932 in Los Angeles, California, Yvonne Burke became the first black woman elected to the California legislature (1966), the first black woman elected to Congress from California (1972), and the first black woman to serve as Chair of the Los Angeles County Supervisors (1993).

Educated in Los Angeles public schools, Burke received her B.A. degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1953. Three years later, Burke received a J.D. from the University of Southern California School of Law. Soon afterwards she entered private practice.

Before her election to the state Assembly in 1966, Burke was a hearing officer for the Los Angeles Police Commission and Deputy Corporation Commissioner for the City of Los Angeles. She served as an attorney for the McCone Commission which investigated the Watts Riots.

In 1972, California Assemblywoman and Congressional Candidate Yvonne Burke was selected to address the Democratic National Convention meeting in Miami Beach, Florida in 1972. With such prominent national exposure she easily won her Congressional Seat for California’s 28th District. Burke served in Congress until 1979. In 1978 she ran for California Attorney General, losing to Republican George Deukmejian in the first political defeat of her career. Following the defeat, Burke was appointed to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 1979, a post she held until 1980.

Born in Richmond, Virginia on January 17, 1931, Lawrence Douglas Wilder was the first African American to be elected governor in the United States of America. For four years Wilder served as the governor of Virginia (1990-1994). Currently he is serving as the mayor of Richmond, Virginia.

Wilder began his education in a racially segregated elementary school, George Mason Elementary, and attended all-black Armstrong High School in Richmond. In 1951 he received a degree in chemistry from Virginia Union University in his hometown. After college, Wilder joined the United States Army and served in the Korean War, where he earned a Bronze Star for heroism. After the war, Wilder worked in the Virginia state medical examiner’s office as a chemist. Using the G.I. Bill, Wilder graduated from Howard UniversityLaw School in 1959 and soon afterwards established Wilder, Gregory and Associates.

Sharon Pratt Dixon was born on January 30, 1944 in Washington, D.C. to parents Carlisle Pratt and Mildred (Petticord) Pratt. Carlisle was a Washington, D.C. Superior Court Judge. Mildred Pratt died of breast cancer when Sharon was four years old. Pratt’s father played a major role in her life by instilling certain values and encouraging her commitment to public service. Sharon Pratt attended public schools in Washington, D.C. and graduated with honors from Roosevelt High School in 1961.

Although she initially wanting to pursue an acting career, her father persuaded Pratt to attend Howard University where in 1965 she received a B.A. degree in Political Science. She then enrolled in Howard University’s School of Law. While in law school, she married Arrington Dixon in 1966 who later became a Washington, D.C. city councilmember. In 1968 Dixon earned her law degree and gave birth to their first daughter, Aimee Arrington Dixon. A second daughter, Drew Arrington Dixon, was born in 1970.

An activist, politician, and leader of her community, Sharon Sayles Belton was the first African American and first woman mayor of the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. A St. Paul native, Belton was born on May 13, 1951. For most of her life she fought for racial equality, women, family and child care issues, youth development and neighborhood development.

Belton, one of four daughters of Bill and Marian Sayles, moved to Minneapolis to live with her father after her parents’ separation. In Minneapolis, Belton attended Central High School and volunteered at Mt. Sinai Hospital in her spare time but eventually accepted a paid position at the hospital as a nurse’s aide. Belton received her Bachelor of Science in biology from Macalester College in 1973 and developed plans to become a pediatrician.

Sources:

Jesse Carney Smith and Joseph M. Palmisano, eds., Reference Library of
Black America (African American Publications, Proteus Enterprises;
University of Michigan, 2000); Doris Weatherford, A History of Women in
the United States: State-by-State Reference (University of Michigan,
2004).

Freeman Roberson Bosley, Jr., is the first African American Mayor of St. Louis, Missouri. Bosley was born in St. Louis on July 20, 1954, the son of Freeman Roberson and Marjorie Bosley. His father, a long-time alderman in St. Louis, unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 1985. Bosley received a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Affairs in 1976 and a Juris Doctor (law) degree in 1979 from St. Louis University. Active in politics as both an undergraduate and a law student, Bosley served as the clerk of the Circuit Courts for eleven years, beginning in 1982, and was the city of St. Louis’s Democratic Party chairman from 1991 to 1993.

In 1993, at the age of 38, Bosley, a Democrat, was elected mayor defeating a relatively unknown Republican, John Gorman, and two independent candidates by winning 67 percent of the vote. He won the Democratic primary over frontrunner Thomas Villa and his 1 million dollar campaign war chest by going door-to-door in African American, white, and racially-mixed neighborhoods accompanied by his wife and their two-year-old daughter. His platform promoted racial harmony, reduced crime, and improved public schools. He also proposed to allocate more funds for neighborhood redevelopment.

Diane Edith Watson was born November 12, 1933 in Los Angeles, California and has spent the majority of her life in the Los Angeles area. Her father was a Los Angeles policeman and her mother worked nights at a post office after her parents divorced when Watson was seven.

In 1950 Watson graduated from Dorsey High School and obtained a bachelor’s degree in education from UCLA in 1956. Here she became friends and sorority sisters with fellow congresswoman Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. Eleven years later, at California State University at Los Angeles, Watson received her master’s degree. Watson received a doctorate in education from Claremont Graduate University in 1986.

In 1956 Watson became a public school teacher in Los Angeles and worked up the ranks to assistant principal in 1969. During that time she held visiting teacher positions in France and Japan. By 1971 Watson worked as a Los Angeles Unified School District health education specialist where she focused on mental health issues among the district’s 500,000 students.

Harold Eugene Ford, Sr., a United States Representative from Tennessee from 1975 to 1997, was born on May 20, 1945 in Memphis, Tennessee to Vera Davis and Newton Jackson Ford, a funeral home director. Ford’s family was part of the local black elite dating back to the beginning of the 20th Century. Ford graduated from Tennessee State University in Nashville in 1967 and later earned an M.B.A. degree from Howard University in 1982.

In 1974, Ford won the Democratic nomination for the Memphis-based 8th Congressional District and the right to oppose four-term Republican incumbent Dan Kuykendall. Kuykendall had first been elected to Congress in 1964, the first of the “Goldwater Republicans” to be elected from the South. Despite Kuykendall’s most recent reelection in 1972, the district was becoming more African American as many Memphis whites left the city for the suburbs. Ford also took advantage of an unprecedented voter registration drive campaign in African American Memphis. The campaign between the white conservative Republican and black liberal Democrat was hotly contested and quickly took on racial overtones.

Harold Eugene Ford, Jr. was born in Memphis, Tennessee on May 11, 1970. He currently serves as chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and is a former member of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee. During his tenure in congress Ford represented the state’s 9th congressional district from 1997 until 2007. This district included most of Memphis. Bucking tradition, Ford did not seek reelection to his House seat in 2006 and instead unsuccessfully sought the Senate seat that was being vacated by the retiring senator Bill Frist. Ford was the only African American member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of moderate Democrats.

After the 2002 mid term elections resulted in Democrats losing Congressional seats, Ford announced his desire to be House Minority Whip based on Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi’s charge that the democratic leadership was less than competent. Ford was unsuccessful in his election bid, but surprised many politicians and pundits on both sides of the political aisle with the amount of support he garnered. A few observers suggested that he might become the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2004. However, given the fact that he was only thirty-four years old, he was ineligible for the office. Ford would be four months shy of thirty-five on Inauguration Day (January 20, 2005).

Long before he became a minister, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Operation Breadbasket, Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), and founder of the Rainbow Coalition, Jesse Louis Jackson impressed his family and close friends as a person destined for greatness. Born Jesse Burns in Greenville, South Carolina on October 8, 1941 to Helen Burns, a 17 year old unwed high school student and Noah Robinson, her older married neighbor, young Jesse took the surname Jackson from his adopted father, Charles Jackson, who later married Burns. Insecure owing to the circumstances of his birth, Jackson decided to make himself a father figure and leader of his people.

Jesse Jackson, Jr., an African American Congressman, represented Illinois’ Second Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from December 12, 1995 to November 21, 2012. On March 11, 1965, in Greenville, South Carolina, in the middle of the voting rights campaign, Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. was born to renowned activist, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Jacqueline Jackson. The younger Jackson’s political career has been deeply impacted by his educational upbringing and his family’s activism.

In 1987, Jackson earned a Business Management Bachelor of Science Degree from North Carolina A & T State University, where he graduated magna cum laude. In 1990, he graduated from the Chicago Theological Seminary earning a Master of Arts Degree in Theology. Three years later Jackson graduated from the University of Illinois College of Law with a Juris Doctorate.

Before his election to Congress in 1995, Jackson served as the National Rainbow Coalition’s National Field Director, registering millions of new voters. In the 1980s he led protests against South African apartheid. In 1986, Jackson spent his 21st birthday in a jail cell in Washington, D.C. for participating in an anti-apartheid protest at the South African Embassy.

Sources:

U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.:
Representing the People of the 2nd District of Illinois,
www.house.gov/jackson/Bio.shtml; Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., Jesse L.
Jackson, Jr.: Congressman, Second Congressional District of Illinois,
www.jessejacksonjr.org; and Mema Ayi and Chicago Defender, Jackson Jr.
bails on mayoral run; says with Dems in control he can do more for
Congress, www.chicagodefender.com/page/local.cfm?ArticleID=7561

Washington Statepolitician George Fleming was born February 22, 1937, in Dallas, Texas, to parents A.R. and Lilla N. Fleming. He started post secondary education at the University of Washington, Seattle. While attending the University, Fleming was running back and kicker for the Washington Huskies who was part of the 1960-61 team that won the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. In fact, Fleming scored the first points with a 44-yard field goal which was at that time the longest in Rose Bowl History.

In 1961, Fleming was the highest-drafted player into the National Football League from the Huskies.

In 1934, Arthur Wergs Mitchell became the first African American Democrat elected to Congress from any state. Mitchell served four terms as a Representative in Congress for the state of Illinois (1935-1943). Mitchell was born near Lafayette Alabama on December 22, 1883 and was educated at Tuskegee Institute, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School. Mitchell founded the Armstrong Agricultural School in West Butler Alabama, and made his fortune in land speculation. He then moved to Chicago, Illinois specifically to challenge Republican Incumbent Oscar DePriest for Congress in the 1934 election. DePriest who was first elected to Congress in 1928, was the first African American elected to Congress from the North and the first to be elected in the 20th Century.

Mitchell was selected by the Democratic Party as a substitute candidate in Illinois’s First Congressional District when Harry Baker, winner of the Democratic primary, died before Election Day. With that selection he became the first African American endorsed by the Illinois Democratic Party for a Congressional seat who would win his election. Mitchell’s rapid rise within the party was partly because he had the support of Chicago Mayor Edward J. Kelly.

From 1974 to 1977, Elaine Brown was Chairwoman of the Black Panther Party. As a Panther, Brown also ran twice for a position on the City Council of Oakland, California. Since the 1970s she has been active in prison and education reform and juvenile justice.

Born in heavily black and impoverished North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1943, Brown attended a predominantly white experimental elementary school where she studied ballet and classical piano. Brown’s childhood was starkly divided between the comfort of her schooling and the realities of her home life. Following high school Brown entered Temple University but left the campus for Los Angeles, California before the end of her first year.

Sources:

Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1992); Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the
Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2003); Elaine Brown, The Condemnation of Little B: New Age Racism in
America (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002); http://www.elainebrown.org/.

Danny K. Davis was born in Parkdale, Arkansas on September 6, 1941, the son of a sharecropper. He received a B.A. in history from Arkansas A.M. & N. College in 1961 and then moved to Chicago. In 1968 he earned an M.A. from Chicago State University and a Ph.D. degree from the Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

After becoming involved in the Chicago civil rights movement in the 1960s, Davis served as a consultant for many public service organizations and as an educator in area universities. He was executive director of the Greater Lawndale Conservation Commission, director of training at the Martin Luther King Neighborhood Health Center, and executive director of the Westside Health Center. He also was an Alderman of the 29th ward on the Chicago City Council and served on the Cook County Board of Commissioners. In 1991 he made an unsuccessful run for mayor of Chicago. Five years later in 1996, he decided to run for the Congressional seat on Chicago’s west side. Davis was elected to represent Chicago’s 7th District and has served in Congress since then.

U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters has dedicated over thirty years of her life to local and national politics. Born Maxine Moore Carr in St. Louis, Missouri on August 15, 1938, Waters moved to Los Angeles in 1961. While working in a garment factory and for a local telephone company, she enrolled at California State University, Los Angeles. After earning a B.A. in Sociology in 1966, Waters worked as a teacher and as Coordinator of Head Start Programs in Watts.

Maxine Waters developed a keen interest in Los Angeles politics when she began working for city councilman David Cunningham in the 1970s. Waters ran for California State Assembly in 1976, winning the election and serving seven two-year terms in Sacramento. In 1990 Waters won a seat as Democratic representative of California in the U.S. House of Representatives. As Representative of the 35th district, which encompasses South Central Los Angeles, Playa Del Ray, Inglewood, and several other Los Angeles communities, Waters has spearheaded health care, child care, education, and welfare reform.

Cardiss Robertson Collins was born September 24, 1931 in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Findley Robertson and Rosa Mae Robertson. At the age of 10 her family relocated to Detroit and she spent the rest of her childhood there, eventually graduating from the Detroit High School of Commerce. After high school Collins attended Northwestern University in Chicago and later became a stenographer with the Illinois Department of Labor. She was promoted several times until she reached the position of revenue auditor for the Illinois State Department of Revenue.

Through her husband, George Collins, and his involvement in politics, Collins became a Democratic Party activist in Chicago. She served as a committee member of the city’s Twenty-fourth Ward Democratic Organization among other community organizations. She was highly visible during George Collins campaigns for Illinois’s Seventh Congressional seat and stayed involved after he won the election. After George Collins passed away in a plane crash near Chicago’s Midway Airport in 1972, a special election was held to fill his seat. Cardiss Collins was nominated by the Democratic Party and easily won the seat left vacant by her husband on June 5, 1973 which she held continuously until 1997.

Carol Moseley-Braun is a former United States Senator from Illinois. Her 1993 election marked the first time in history that a black woman or a black Democrat had ever been elected to the U.S. Senate. Moseley-Braun was born in 1947 in Chicago. She graduated from the University of Illinois and the University Of Chicago School Of Law and was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1973. She worked as a prosecutor for the U.S. attorney for three years and then served, in 1978, in the Illinois House of Representatives where she rose to the rank of Assistant Majority Leader by 1988. In 1989 she was appointed Recorder of Deeds, which was also the first time a woman or black person had held an executive position in the Cook County government.

Democratic representative Katie Hall was elected to the United States Congress in 1983. Born in Mound Bayou, Bolivar County, Mississippi in 1938, she attended Mississippi Valley State University and Indiana University before teaching in the public schools of Gary Indiana. Hall was elected to the Indiana State Legislature in 1972, and then to the Indiana State Senate in 1974, a position she was continually reelected to until 1983 when she campaigned for Congress from Indiana’s First Congressional District which is mostly Gary and the northwestern corner of the state.

Hall was nominated to run as a representative by the Democratic Party when Congressman Adam Benjamin died in office in 1982 shortly after winning reelection. Through a well organized six week campaign, Hall achieved an impressive 60% of the votes in the 1983 special election to become First District Representative, winning 97% of the black vote and a surprising 51% of the white vote.

Charles Diggs was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1922. His father was Charles Coles Diggs and his mother was Mayme Jones Diggs. Young Diggs had an upper middle class background; his father, a prominent mortician and real estate developer, served in the Michigan State Senate. Diggs eventually took over the family business and followed his father into politics.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1938, Juanita Millender McDonald was an educator and member of the United States House of Representatives. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Redlands and a master’s degree from California State University at Los Angeles.

Millender-McDonald taught in the Los Angeles School District, and was the editor of Images, a textbook designed to improve the self-esteem of young women. As director of gender-equity programs for the school district, Millender-McDonald received national recognition when she served on the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.

In 1990, Millender-McDonald became the first African-American elected to the Carson City Council. She was elected mayor pro tem for Carson in 1991, and won a set in the California State Assembly in 1992.

Andrew Buni, Robert L. Vann of the Pittsburgh Courier (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974); Aurora Wallace, Newspapers and the Making of Modern America (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2005); http://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/courier.html.

A politically motivated attack by whites against the city’s leading African American citizens, the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 documents the lengths to which Southern White Democrats went to regain political domination of the South after Reconstruction. The violence began on Thursday, November 10th in the predominantly African American city of Wilmington, North Carolina, at that time the state’s largest metropolis. Statewide election returns had recently signaled a shift in power with Democrats taking over the North Carolina State Legislature. The city of Wilmington, however, remained in Republican hands primarily because of its solid base of African American voters. On November 10th, Alfred Moore Waddell, a former Confederate officer and a white supremacist, led a group of townsmen to force the ouster of Wilmington’s city officials.

Sources:

David S. Cecelski, Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998); “Early African American Perspectives on the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898,” Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library Archives.

Cynthia Ann McKinney was born on March 17, 1955 in Atlanta, Georgia to parents Billy McKinney, who was a police officer and to a mother, Leola Christion McKinney, who was a nurse. Her father was a political activist who challenged his employer, the Atlanta Police Department, for its practice of racial discrimination. This desire to use activism in the cause of racial justice was inherited by Cynthia McKinney who initiated her first petition against racism while still in school. In 1971 she challenged a teacher at the Catholic institution for using racist language. Meanwhile, her father, Billy McKinney was elected to the Georgia State Legislature in 1973 as a Democrat.

After completing St. Joseph’s High School in Atlanta in 1973, McKinney in 1978 received a degree in international relations from the University of Southern California. This degree would serve her well in the future as became increasingly concerned about the role and impact of U.S. foreign around the world. McKinney then entered the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. There she met and Jamaican politician Coy Grandison and returned to Jamaica with him.

Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison was born on August 4, 1963 in Detroit, Michigan. He was raised Catholic in a middle class family which included five sons to a father who was a psychiatrist and a mother who was a social worker. Since childhood Ellison was involved with the civil rights movement and briefly worked with his grandfather in Louisiana for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In 1981 Ellison graduated from the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy. Six years later he graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit with a B.A. in economics. While attending Wayne State University, Ellison converted from Catholicism to Islam. After graduation Ellison attended the University of Minnesota Law School, graduating in 1990.

Ellison began his professional career at the Minneapolis law firm of Lindquist and Vennum. He worked there for three years as a litigator specializing in criminal defense, civil rights, and employment. After leaving Lindquist and Vennum Ellison he became executive director of the nonprofit Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis. He then returned to private practice by joining Hassan & Reed where he specialized in trial practice.

James Enos Clyburn was born in Sumter, South Carolina on July 21, 1940 to parents Enos and Almeta Clyburn. James Clyburn’s father was a minister and his mother was a cosmetologist. In 1957 James Clyburn graduated from Mather Academy located in Camden, South Carolina. Four years later he graduated with a B.A. in history from South Carolina State University.

After graduation Clyburn worked as a teacher for C.A. Brown High School in Charleston. In 1971 he became a member of Governor John C. West’s staff, becoming the first African American to be an advisor to a Governor of South Carolina. In 1974 Clyburn was appointed Commissioner of South Carolina’s Human Affairs Office by Governor West. Clyburn held this position until he stepped down in order to pursue a seat in Congress in 1992.

In 1992 Clyburn decided to run for office after South Carolina’s Sixth Congressional District was redrawn to include an African American majority. Clyburn campaigned for the seat as a Democratic candidate and won the seat. He is currently in the House of Representatives and has received important positions during his tenure as a Congressman. In 2003 he was named vice-chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. Three years later, in 2006, he became chairman. Clyburn is also the majority whip making him the third most powerful Democrat in Congress and the most important African American in Congress.

John Lewis was born in Troy, Alabama on February 21, 1940. In 1961 he received a B.A. from American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1967 he received an additional B.A. from Fisk University located in Nashville, Tennessee.

On January 20, 2009, with the Presidential swearing in of her husband Barack Obama, Michelle Robinson Obama became the first person of African American descent to become First Lady of the United States.

Obama is an accomplished professional with an impressive resume of her own. Outspoken, intelligent, and articulate, she can give passionate speeches, displaying warmth, charisma, and her ability to build an empathetic relationship with her audience. Early in her husband’s campaign for the Presidency, her forthright style sometimes resulted in “sound bites” which when taken out of context became controversial.

Born January 17, 1964 to Frasier Robinson, a pump operator for the city of Chicago’s water plant, and Marian Robinson, who spent much of Michelle’s childhood a homemaker, Michelle grew up on Chicago, Illinois' South Side, one of the nation’s poorest urban communities. Her parents strictly limited their children’s television viewing, and Michelle and her brother Craig were expected to take part in discussions around the family dinner table.

In 1870 Republican Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African American to be elected to the United States House of Representatives and take his seat. Others were elected earlier but were not seated. Rainey was born in Georgetown, South Carolina, on June 21, 1832. His parents had been slaves but his father purchased his family’s freedom and taught him to be a barber. The family moved to Charleston in 1846. Rainey, however, traveled frequently outside the South and married in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1859.

In 1861 Joseph Rainey was drafted to work on a Confederate blockade runner during the Civil War. In 1862 he escaped to Bermuda with his wife and worked there as a barber before returning to South Carolina in 1866.

Democratic representative of New York City, Charles Bernard Rangel, first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1970, is now one of the longest serving members of Congress. Rangel was born in Brooklyn, New York City in 1930. He attended De Witt Clinton High School but dropped out in 1948 and entered the U.S. Army. Two years later he served in the second infantry division in Korea where he earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his actions in combat.

In 1952 Rangel was discharged and returned to New York, graduated from high school, earned a B.S. degree from New York University in 1957 and a J.D degree from St. Johns University in 1960. Upon admittance to the bar Rangel began practicing law in New York City.

In 1964 Charles Rangel spent the year as assistant U.S. attorney for the south district of New York working under U.S. Attorney Robert Morgenthau. In 1965 he was counsel to the Speaker of the New York State Assembly. He also served as counsel to the President’s Commission to Revise the Draft Laws. Throughout the late 1960s Rangel was legal advisor to many civil rights activists in New York and the South.

Former Missouri Democratic Congressman William L. Clay Sr. was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 30, 1931, one of seven children. Clay excelled in school and at the age of thirteen began working as a janitor in a clothing store. He later became the tailor for the store. Clay graduated from St. Louis University in 1953 with a B.S. degree in history and political science, and then served in the military. Upon his discharge he worked as a real estate broker and manager of a life insurance company.

In the 1950s Clay became active in St. Louis politics and in the civil rights movement emerging in the city. In 1959 he was elected to the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, representing the 26th ward. He held the position until 1964. Between 1961 and 1964 he was also a business representative for the city employees union and between 1966 and 1967 was the educational coordinator for a local steamfitters union.

In 1968 Clay won the Democratic Primary nomination for Missouri’s First Congressional District. He won the seat outright in the general election in November, becoming the first African American elected to Congress from the state of Missouri.

William Lacy Clay, Jr. is the son of former Missouri Congressman William L. Clay Sr., and now holds his father’s former seat in the House of Representatives. Clay was born on July 27, 1956 in St. Louis, Missouri, and was educated in the Silver Springs public schools of Maryland and at the University of Maryland where he received a B.S. degree in government and politics. He also earned honorary Doctorate of Laws Degrees from Lincoln University and Harris Stowe State University, and attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Before his election in 2000 to Missouri’s First Congressional District, Clay served for 17 years in both chambers of the Missouri Legislature. His achievements during this time include the establishment of Missouri’s Hate Crimes Law and the enactment of the Youth Opportunities and Violence Prevention Act; which created Youthbuild, a job training program for young adults.

U.S. Congresswoman Barbara-Rose Collins was born in Detroit, Michigan on April 13, 1939 to Lunar N. and Vera (Jones) Richardson. Collins attended Wayne State University in Detroit. Her career began at Wayne State University where she served as business manager, worked in the Physics department, and worked in neighborhood relations. Prior to being elected to Congress, she also served as a board member in Detroit’s School Region I between 1971 and 1973.

In 1975 Collins was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives from the 21st District (Detroit) and served there until 1981. She was elected to the Detroit City Council in 1981 and served there until her election to the U.S. House. During this time (1974-1975), Collins also served as a commissioner of the Human Rights Commission of Detroit. In 1985 she chaired the Detroit City Council Task Force on Teenage Violence. In 1991, Collins was elected as a U.S. Congresswoman from Michigan’s 15th District, after the death of her husband, Congressman George Collins, in a plane crash.

U.S. Congressman Elijah E. Cummings was born in Baltimore, Maryland on January 18, 1951. He received a B.A. degree from Howard University (Washington, D.C.) in 1973 and a J.D. degree from the University of Maryland (College Park) in 1976. Cummings, one of seven children of working-class parents who had migrated from a farm in South Carolina, grew up in a rental house, but often recalled the family “scrimping and saving” to buy their own home in a desegregated neighborhood. When the family moved into that home in 1963, when Cummings was twelve years of age, he recalled that he had “never played on grass before.”

Born on March 5, 1925 in Chicago, Illinois, George Washington Collins graduated from Waller High School and immediately joined the United States Army in 1943 at the age of 18. He rose to the rank of sergeant and was discharged in 1946. Collins attended the Central Y.M.C.A. College in Chicago, receiving his degree in 1954. He later earned a business law degree from Northwestern University. Collins worked as a Cook County (Chicago) deputy sheriff and then served as secretary to Alderman Benjamin Lewis of Chicago’s Twenty-Fourth Ward. He was later an administrative assistant to the director of the Chicago Board of Health. In 1958 George Collins married Cardiss Robertson formerly of St. Louis.

George William Crockett Jr. was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 10, 1909 to George William Crockett Sr., and Minnie Amelia Jenkins. His father was a Baptist minister and railroad carpenter and his mother was a Sunday School teacher and poet. Crockett grew up in Jacksonville, attending public schools there until his graduation from Stanton High Schoo1 in 1927. He then graduated from Morehouse College in 1931 with a B.A. in history and the University of Michigan where he received his J.D. in 1934. Crockett was admitted to the Florida bar in 1934 and soon afterwards began his long career in politics.

In 1937 Crockett helped found the National Lawyers Guild, the first racially integrated bar association in the United States. Two years later Crockett became the first African American lawyer hired by the United States Department of Labor, where he worked on employment cases under the National Labor Relations Act. During World War II Crockett became a hearing officer for the Federal Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC). Keenly aware of racial segregation and discrimination in labor unions, Crockett, after leaving the Labor Department, became the director of the Fair Employment Practices Department of the International United Auto Workers (UAW) Union, 1944, a post that brought his return to Michigan.

Sheila Jackson-Lee was born on January 12, 1950 in Queens, New York. She graduated from Jamaica High School in Queens, New York in 1968. She then graduated from Yale University in Connecticut with a B.A. in political science in 1972 followed in 1975 by a J.D. from the University of VirginiaLaw School.

After graduating from law school Jackson-Lee moved to Houston, Texas after her husband, Dr. Elwyn C. Lee accepted a job offer from the University of Houston. Dr. Lee is currently Vice Chancellor and Vice President for Student Affairs at the University of Houston. Jackson-Lee was in private practice from 1975 to 1987 when she was elected a Houston municipal judge. Jackson-Lee then ran for a seat on the Houston City Council in 1990. In 1994 Shelia Jackson-Lee was elected as a Democrat to represent the 18th Congressional District of Texas. She currently holds that seat.

Currently in the political spotlight for her steadfast support of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Stephanie Tubbs Jones is a Democratic Representative of the state of Ohio. She was born on September 10, 1949 in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio and attended the county’s public schools before getting her bachelor’s degree in social work from Case Western Reserve University in 1971. She also earned a Jurist Doctorate from Case Western Reserve University Law School in 1974.

In 1981 Tubbs was elected to the Cleveland municipal court and from 1983 to 1991 was the judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga County, the first African American woman to sit on its bench. She also worked as a prosecutor in Cuyahoga County between 1991 and 1998, once again the first woman and the first African American to serve in this position.

In January of 1999 Judge Tubbs became the first woman to be elected to the United States House of Representatives from the state of Ohio. She still holds that position and is now in her fifth term in office as representative of the Eleventh Congressional District.

Albert Russel Wynn is Democratic representative of the State of Maryland’s Fourth Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. He is currently serving his eighth term. The district includes parts of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. Wynn was defeated in the Democratic primary of February 13, 2008, by Donna Edwards.

Born in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Albert Wynn received his bachelor degree in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1973. He then completed a year of graduate study in Public Administration at Howard University, before earning a law degree from Georgetown University in 1977. From 1977 to 1981 Wynn was executive director of the Consumer Protection Commission in Prince George’s County, Maryland. In 1981 he became a practicing attorney and the following year he created the law office of Albert R. Wynn and Associates.

Wynn served five years in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1982 to 1987, and then served in the Maryland Senate for five years from 1987 to 1992 where he was deputy majority whip.

Craig Anthony Washington, former Congressman from Houston, Texas, was born in Longview, Gregg County, Texas on October 12, 1941 to Roy and Azalia Washington. He attended Prairie View A & M University in Texas and received his B.A. in 1966. In 1969 he graduated from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University. Washington commenced practice as a criminal defense lawyer and is a partner in a Houston law firm.

Soon after embarking on his private career, Washington entered politics and was elected a member of the Texas House of Representatives. He and George Thomas “Mickey” Leland served together as freshmen members of the Texas legislature in 1973-1975. Leland in 1978 would be elected to represent Texas’s 18th Congressional District, succeeding retiring Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. Washington continued to serve in the Texas House of Representatives until election to the state Senate in 1983, where he served for the next 6 years. As a member of the state legislature, he served as chairman of the House committees on criminal jurisprudence, social services and human services and as chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus.

Alan Dupree Wheat, the first black Congressman from Kansas City, Missouri, was born in San Antonio, Texas, on October 16, 1951. He attended schools in Wichita, Kansas, and in Seville, Spain, before graduating from Airline High School in Bossier City, Louisiana, in 1968. In 1972 Wheat received a B.A. in economics from Grinnell College and then joined the Department of Housing and Urban Development as an economist. From 1973 to 1975 he worked in the same capacity for the Mid-America Regional Council in Kansas City. In Jackson County, Missouri he served as an aide for county executive Mike White from 1975 to 1976. At age 25 Wheat was elected to the Missouri General Assembly. Wheat served three terms in the Assembly where he chaired the Urban Affairs Committee.

Ohio’s first African American Congressman, Louis Stokes was born to Charles and Louis Stokes on February 23, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended its public schools before joining the United States Army in 1943. Stokes served in the army for three years and then attended Western Reserve University from 1946 to 1948 where he earned a B.A. In 1953 he received a Doctor of Law degree from Cleveland Marshall Law School of the Cleveland State University. Stokes was admitted to the Ohio bar the same year and began practicing law in Cleveland.

Donald Payne, a Democrat, was the first African American elected to Congress from the State of New Jersey. Payne was born in Newark, New Jersey on July 16, 1934. He earned a B.A. degree in social studies from Seton Hall University in 1957 and also has honorary doctorates from Chicago State University, Drew University, Essex County College, and William Patterson University.

After graduating in 1957 Payne began working for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), traveling around the world as its representative. In 1970 Payne became its first African American president. From 1973 to 1981 he chaired the YMCA Refugee and Rehabilitation Committee that was based in Geneva. In 1972 he was elected to the Essex County (New Jersey) Board of Chosen Freeholders, and became its director in 1977.

Donald Payne challenged longtime Congressional incumbent Peter W. Rodino Jr. in the Democratic primary in both 1980 and 1986 but failed both times. In 1988 however, when Rodino said he would not seek a 21st term, Payne won nomination and was elected to Congress.

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) was established in 1971, although its roots go back to the Democratic Select Committee (DSC). The DSC was started in 1969 by Representative Charles Diggs of Michigan, who was looking for a way the nine Black members of the House of Representatives could meet and talk about their common political concerns. The DSC addressed a number of issues of concern to African Americans, including investigating the killings of certain members of the Black Panther Party and boycotting President Richard Nixon’s 1970 State of the Union Address. This boycott pressured Nixon into meeting with the DSC and discussing topics such as civil rights, Vietnam, anti-drug legislation, and welfare reform.

In 1971 the group was formally organized as the CBC and Diggs was nominated as its first chairman. In 1972 the group set out to make sure that all Democrats became more attentive to black concerns. At the 1972 Democratic National Convention the CBC drafted the Black Declaration of Independence and the Black Bill of Rights. The Black Declaration of Independence demanded that the Democratic Party and its nominee commit themselves to full racial equality. The Black Bill of Rights on the other hand made more specific demands, which failed to gain the support of the Party or its nominee, George McGovern.

Richard Gordon Hatcher, the first African American mayor of Gary, Indiana and one of the first African Americans to serve as mayor of a major city, was born on July 10, 1933 in Michigan City, Indiana. Hatcher was elected mayor of Gary, Indiana in 1967 and served in that capacity for the next 20 years. In the late 1970s he also became the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1984 Hatcher was campaign chairman for Rev. Jesse Jackson's bid for president and he served as an advisor in Jackson's 1988 campaign.

Hatcher’s administration in Gary was known for developing innovative approaches to urban issues and for promoting the civil rights of blacks and other people of color in one of the first predominantly black cities in the North. His term began during the period when “black power” was increasingly the rallying cry of African American political activists across the nation. Hatcher clearly identified with this new movement.

Carolina in the 20th century, Mel Watts is a current member of the United States House of Representatives. Watts was born on August 26, 1945 in the small community of Steele Creek in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and attended high school in Charlotte. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1967. Watt was a Phi Beta Kappa and was president of the business honors fraternity. He also has a J.D. degree from Yale University Law School as well as honorary degrees from North Carolina A&T State University, Johnson C. Smith University, Bennett College and Fisk University.

Watt had a varied career before serving in Congress. Between 1971 and 1992 he practiced law with the firm formerly known as Chambers, Stein, Ferguson, and Becton. He was also a small business owner and managed the campaigns of Harvey Gantt for Charlotte City Council, for Mayor of Charlotte and for the United States Senate from North Carolina. Watt also served in the North Carolina Senate from 1985 to 1987. He did not seek a second term, postponing his political activity until his children were high school graduates. Watt was known during his single term as “the conscience of the senate.”

Sources:

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=w000207; Watt for Congress Website, http://www.wattforcongress.com/melwatt.html.

Corrine Brown, now in her eighth term in office, is a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. She represents Florida’s Third Congressional District which includes Jacksonville and the surrounding area. Brown was born on November 11, 1946 in Jacksonville, Florida and grew up there. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University and an M.A. from the University of Florida in 1971. Before entering Congress, Brown owned a travel agency, taught at several Florida colleges, and worked as a counselor at Florida Community College (1977-1992).

In 1983 Brown was elected to the Florida State House of Representatives. She held this position until 1992, when she ran and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

David Scott represents Georgia’s 13th district in the U.S. House of Representatives. The 13th district includes portions of Cobb, Clayton, Douglas, Fulton, Henry, and DeKalb counties.

The son of a minister, Scott was born in Aynor, South Carolina, on July 27, 1946. He attended elementary school in Scranton, Pennsylvania, junior high in Scarsdale, New York, and high school in Daytona, Florida. In 1967 he received his B.A. degree in finance with honors from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.B.A. with honors from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance in 1969. Scott founded Dayn-Mark Advertising in 1978 in Atlanta, Georgia, which is currently run by his wife Alfredia Scott.

David Scott was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1974 and served as a member until 1982. He then served in the Georgia Senate from 1983 until his successful election bid for Congress in 2002.

William Herbert Gray III was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on August 20, 1941. His mother, Hazel Yates Gray, was a high school teacher. His father, William Herbert Gray Jr. was a Baptist Minister and over his career, the president of two Florida colleges. Upon taking a job as pastor of Bright Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, William H. Gray Jr. moved his family to the Philadelphia area. Following in his father’s footsteps, Gray became an assistant pastor of a church in Montclair, New Jersey, after graduating from Franklin and Marshal College in 1963. Gray received a master of divinity degree in 1966 from Drew Theological School. He became senior minister at his church that same year. In 1970, Gray earned a degree in Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. As a Baptist minister Gray became involved in the fair housing campaign in New Jersey. In one instance Gray successfully sued a landlord who had refused to rent to him because of his race.

After his father died in 1972, William Gray returned to Philadelphia and became the minister of Bright Hope Baptist Church. Four years later, Gray made his first run for Congress in 1976, campaigning on his experience of promoting fair housing. He lost to incumbent Pennsylvania Congressman Robert Nix in the Democratic Primary but won his second bid in 1978 ending Nix’s 20 year tenure in Congress.

Born in Huntsville, Alabama, on the 6th of August, 1912, Illinois Congressman Bennett McVey Stewart was the son of Bennett Stewart and Cathleen Jones. He attended local public schools in Huntsville and Birmingham before entering Miles College in Birmingham. There he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1936. His first job after graduation was assistant principal of Birmingham’s Irondale High School, from 1936 until 1938. Next he took a job as associate professor of sociology at Miles College in Birmingham. That year he married Pattye Crittenden, with whom he had three children.

Stewart left the teaching profession in 1940 to work for Atlanta Life Insurance Company were he eventually became an executive. He moved to Chicago in 1950 to set up the Company’s new office and remained working there for the next eight years.

Image Courtesy of the
U.S. House of Representatives
Photography Office

Donna Marie Christian-Christensen, the non-voting delegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands to the United States House of Representatives, was born in Teaneck, Monmouth Country, New Jersey on September 19, 1945 to the late Judge Almeric Christian and Virginia Sterling Christian. Christensen attended St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, where she received her Bachelor of Science in 1966. She then earned her M.D. degree from George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. in 1970. Christensen began her medical career in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1975 as an emergency room physician at St. Croix Hospital. Between 1987 and 1988 she was medical director of the St. Croix Hospital and from 1988 to 1994 she was Commissioner of Health for the Virgin Island. During the entire period from 1977 to l996 Christensen maintained a private practice in family medicine. From 1992 to 1996 she was also a television journalist.

Christensen also entered Virgin Island politics. As a member of the Democratic Party of the Virgin Islands, she has served as Democratic National Committeewoman, member of the Democratic Territorial Committee and Delegate to all the Democratic Conventions in 1984, 1988 and 1992. Christensen was also elected to the Virgin Islands Board of Education in 1984 and served for two years. She served as a member of the Virgin Islands Status Commission from 1988 to 1992.

Edwin Garrison Walker, leatherworker, lawyer, and politician, was born free in Boston, Massachusetts to Eliza and David Walker in 1831. His exact date of birth is unknown. His mother Eliza, whose last name also is unknown, was, according to most sources, a fugitive slave. His father, David Walker, was nationally known for authoring David Walker’s Appeal, a controversial abolitionist text which was published in Boston in 1839.

Walker was educated in Boston’s public school system and while growing up trained as a leatherworker. He eventually owned his own shop and employed fifteen people. Walker, along with Lewis Hayden and Robert Morris, by now all well-known Boston abolitionists, were lauded by the New England public in 1851 for their assistance in obtaining the release of Shadrach, a fugitive slave.mj

While fighting for the release of Shadrach, Walker acquired a copy of Blackstone’s Commentaries, which piqued his interest in law. Shortly thereafter, while still a leatherworker, Walker studied law in the offices of John Q. A. Griffin and Charles A. Tweed in Georgetown, Massachusetts. After passing his law examination with ease in May, 1861, Walker became the third African American admitted to the Massachusetts Bar.

Congressman Robert Cortez “Bobby” Scott was born on April 30, 1947 in Washington, D.C. but later resided in Newport News, Virginia. Scott attended Harvard University and later graduated from the Boston College School of Law.

Scott, a Democrat, entered politics in 1978, running a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Newport News. In 1983 he was elected to the Virginia State Senate. During his years in the Virginia Assembly, Scott sponsored legislation related to healthcare, education, crime prevention, economic development, consumer protection and social services. One of his measures increased the Virginia minimum wage and another produced improvements in healthcare benefits for women, infants, and children. Scott also sponsored legislation that created the Governor’s Employment and Training Council. His sponsorship of the Neighborhood Assistance Act led to granting tax credits to businesses for donations made to approved social service and crime prevention programs

Roderick Raynor Paige, the first African American and the first school superintendent to serve as the U.S. Secretary of Education, was born on June 17, 1933 in Monticello, Mississippi. The eldest of five children, Paige was born to his mother Sophie, a librarian, and father, Raynor C. Paige, a school principal and barber.

Roderick Paige attended segregated schools in Monticello where he saw the stark differences between the education and opportunities offered to white children and black children. In 1951, Paige graduated from high school and enrolled at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi. He was an honor student and football player there. In 1955, after he graduated with a B.A. in physical education, Paige began teaching at a high school in Clinton, Mississippi. However, not long after he started, he was drafted and joined the U.S. Navy. Before he left for Okinawa (Japan) to work as a medical corpsman, Paige married his college sweetheart, Gloria Crawford.

Born in Washington, D.C. on April 27, 1969, Cory Booker is currently the United States Senator from New Jersey. Booker was raised in Harrington Park, New Jersey, a mostly white town where his parents Cary and Carolyn Booker, former civil rights activists and pioneer black executives at IBM, settled down. He attended Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan. Following his graduation he enrolled at Stanford University in California where he earned a B.A. in political science as well an M.A. in sociology. Booker played varsity football at Stanford and was named to the 1991 All-Pacific Ten Academic Team. Booker was awarded a Rhodes scholarship, one of few student athletes to do so, and went on to study at The Queens College in Oxford, England where he garnered his third degree, Honors History in 1994.

Sources:

Cory Booker, The First 100 Days: Newark, 100 Day Plan Report (Newark: Newark Public Information Office, 2006); Kendra Field, Race, Identity, and Legitimacy in Context: Cory Booker v. Sharpe James (Cambridge, Mass.: John F. Kennedy School of Government, 2002); http://corybooker.com/; David Segal, "Urban Legend How Cory Booker Became Newark's Mayor: By Being Almost Too Good to Be True" The Washington Post, July 3, 2006; Kate Zernike, "Booker, Winning Rocky Senate Bid, Gets a Job to Fit his Profile," New York Times, October 16, 2013.

In 2006 Sophia Danenberg became the first African American and first black woman from anywhere in the world to climb the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest in the Himalayas (Nepal).

Sophia Marie Scott was born in 1972 in Homewood, Illinois (a southern suburb of Chicago) to a Japanese mother and black father. She attended Homewood-Flossmoor High School, graduating in 1990. Danenberg then studied environmental sciences and public policy at Harvard University, graduating in 1994, before going on to Keio University in Tokyo as a Fulbright Fellow. Danenberg then began her professional career with United Technologies in Japan and China, managing energy and indoor air quality projects, before moving to Hartford, Connecticut where she worked in green technology research programs at United Technologies.

On January 15, 2009 Roland Wallace Burris was sworn in as the U.S. Senator from Illinois. Burris's appointment made him the third African American U.S. Senator from the state and the sixth black U.S. Senator in the history of the United States. The appointment, however, was marred by controversy as he was appointed to fill the Senatorial seat of President Barack Obama by Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich who had been arrested for allegedly attempting to sell that seat to the highest bidder.

In 2002, Kwame Malik Kilpatrick, at the age of 31, became the youngest person to be elected mayor of Detroit, Michigan. Six years later in 2008, Kilpatrick resigned his post as mayor after his conviction for obstruction of justice stemming from a sex scandal involving the mayor and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty. Kilpatrick, married and the father of three sons, had an affair with Beatty, a divorced single mother and then committed perjury in a 2007 trial when he denied the relationship under oath. Kilpatrick was forced to resign from his office and spent 120 days in jail as part of a guilty plea to the charges of obstructing justice.

Kilpatrick, the son of U.S. Representative Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Bernard Kilpatrick, former Chief of Staff for Wayne County Executive Edward H. McNamara, was born in Detroit on June 6, 1970. Kilpatrick was the captain of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University’s football team. He earned a B.A. degree in political science there. He returned to Detroit and taught at the Marcus Garvey Academy.

Donna Edwards is a Democratic member of U.S. House of Representatives, representing the 4th Congressional District of Maryland since 2008. Early in 2009 she was among a group of U.S. Congress members who were handcuffed and arrested while protesting the expulsion of aid groups from Darfur in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Edwards earned her BA from Wake Forest University where she was one of six African American women in her class. She later earned a JD from Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire. Prior to her political career, she worked as a systems engineer with the Spacelab program at Lockheed Corporation’s Goddard Space Flight Center. During the 1980s, Edwards worked as a clerk for then district judge Albert Wynn when he served in the Maryland House of Delegates.

Frank W. Ballance, Jr., was a Democraticmember of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2003 to 2004, representing the 1st Congressional District in North Carolina. Prior to his tenure as a member of Congress, Ballance served in the North Carolina State House of Representatives as well as its State Senate.

The Atlanta Race Riot or Atlanta Riot of 1906 was the first race riot to take place in the capital city of Georgia. The riot lasted from September 22 to September 24 and was the culmination of a number of factors, including lingering tensions from reconstruction, job competition, black voting rights, and increasing desire of African Americans to secure their civil rights.

Sources:

David Fort Godshalk, Veiled Visions: the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot and the
Reshaping of American Race Relations (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2005); Rebecca Burns, Rage in the Gate City: The Story
of the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot (Athens: University of Georgia Press,
2009); http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3033.

The Colfax Massacre occurred on April 13, 1873. The battle-turned-massacre took place in the small town of Colfax, Louisiana as a clash between blacks and whites. Three whites and an estimated 150 blacks died in the conflict.

The massacre took place against the backdrop of racial tensions following the hotly contested Louisiana governor's race of 1872. While the Republicans narrowly won the contest and retained control of the state, white Democrats, angry over the defeat, vowed revenge. In Colfax Parish (county) as in other areas of the state, they organized a white militia to directly challenge the mostly black state militia under the control of the governor.

On July 8, 1876, the small town of Hamburg, South Carolina erupted in violence as the community's African American militia clashed with whites from the surrounding rural area. Hamburg was a small all-black community across the river from Augusta, Georgia. Like many African American communities in South Carolina, it was solidly Republican and with the GOP in charge in Columbia, some of its men were members of the South Carolina National Guard (the Militia).

On July 4, two white farmers from surrounding Edgefield County, Thomas Butler and Henry Getzen, attempted to drive a carriage through the town along the main road, but were obstructed by the all-black Militia which was engaged in a military exercise. Although the farmers got through the military formation after an initial argument, racial tensions remained high.

Sources:

Stephen Budiansky, The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox (New York:
Viking Penguin, 2008); Thomas Holt, Black over White: Negro Political
Leadership in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1979); Richard Zuczek, State of Rebellion:
Reconstruction in South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1966).

Lonnie Smith was a well-known dentist in Houston, Texas, an officer in the Houston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and a civil rights activist. He is best known for his role in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case bearing his name, Smith v. Allwright.

Sources:

Darlene Clark Hine, Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the White Primary in Texas (Millwood, New York: KTO Press, 1979); Charles L. Zelden, The Battle for the Black Ballot: Smith v. Allwright and the Defeat of the Texas All-White Primary (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004); http://www.laits.utexas.edu; http://www.tshaonline.org.

Donna Brazile, author, campaign manager, adjunct professor, political analyst, and current vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was born December 15, 1959 in New Orleans, Louisiana to Lionel and Jean Brazile. Brazile was the third of nine children, and her father (a janitor) and mother (a domestic worker) often had a hard time making ends meet. Brazile became interested in politics at age nine when she heard that a local candidate for city council had promised to build a playground in her neighborhood. The young Brazile volunteered for the campaign and passed out pamphlets to her neighbors. The candidate won, the neighborhood got a playground, and Brazile discovered her new passion for political activism. At age 17 Brazile volunteered for the Carter-Mondale campaign in 1976, stuffing envelopes at the local campaign headquarters.

Brazile attended Louisiana State University where she earned her degree in industrial psychology in 1981. After graduation Brazile worked as a lobbyist for the National Student Education Fund in Washington, D.C. During the same time period Brazile was hired by Coretta Scott King to help plan a re-enactment of the 1963 civil rights march on Washington in 1983. Brazile worked with the Dr. Martin Luther King Foundation to help establish Dr. King’s birthday as a national holiday.

Democratic Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson was born on November 5, 1942 in Miami, Florida to Beulah Finley and Thirlee Smith. Wilson learned the importance of community activism at a young age. Her father was a small business owner and civil rights activist who worked to promote voter-registration in Miami’s black neighborhoods.

After graduating from Miami Northwestern Senior High School, Wilson attended Fisk University in Memphis, Tennessee where she graduated with a degree in Elementary Education in 1963. That same year Wilson married an investment banker, Paul Wilson, with whom she had three children. While working as an elementary school teacher in the Miami-Dade school district Wilson earned her Master of Science in Elementary Education from the University of Miami in 1971. In 1980 she became principal of Skyway Elementary in the upper middle class black suburb of Miami Gardens. During her time as principal Wilson led a successful campaign to shut down an Agripost compost plant that was polluting the community and preventing the school children from playing outside during recess. The pollution also caused a mold problem at the elementary school.

Former Washington State Legislator and current internet business entrepreneur, Jesse Calvin Wineberry was born in 1955 in Sedro Woolley, Washington, and adopted by parents Peter and Mary Wineberry. Wineberry grew up in Seattle’s Central District and attended Queen Anne High School. He earned a degree in Business Administration in 1979 from the University of Washington, Seattle, and his Juris Doctorate from University of Puget Sound (UPS) Law School in 1986. Wineberry and his wife, Brenda, have two children, Jesse Jr. and Mia.

After graduating from the University of Washington, Wineberry worked as a television news reporter for KSTW in Tacoma and then a special correspondent for the station’s news coverage of the White House and Capitol Hill. In 1982 he was appointed a Congressional Black Caucus Association-Congressional Fellow on the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Consumer Protection, and Finance. While there Wineberry provided background information in the United States vs. AT&T lawsuit that ended the 75 year AT&T monopoly on telephone service and created competition in the field of long-distance and wireless communication.

Sources:

“Jesse Wineberry,” The Lawyer (Seattle University School of Law, Winter 1993);
http://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/thelawyer/12;
"BLSA Honors Founding Members Hightower and Wineberry," Amicus Brief
(Seattle University School of Law, 2010).

Alexis Herman, US Secretary of Labor, political activist, civic leader, social worker, and entrepreneur, was born on July 16, 1947 in Mobile, Alabama to politician Alex Herman and educator Gloria Caponis. Herman graduated from Heart of Mary High School in Mobile in 1965 and enrolled in Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, and then Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama before transferring to St. Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology in 1969. She joined the Gamma Alpha Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta during her college years and supported this sorority throughout her career.

Hawaii State Senator Charles M. Campbell was born in North Carolina in 1918. He grew up there and received an A.D. degree from North Carolina College in Durham. He also received an M.A. degree from Howard University and a second M.A. from Columbia University.

Campbell began his career by becoming the first black newscaster to do “straight broadcasting” in Philadelphia. He was the first black member of the Radio Television News Directors Association and became Vice President of Radio News Reel Television Working Press Association.

Sources:

Naomi Campbell, Interview with Daphne Barbee-Wooten, June 1999; “Spreading
Aloha through Civil Rights,” by Daphne Barbee-Wooten, Hawaii Bar
Journal, October 1999; Miles M. Jackson, And They Came (Honolulu: Four
Publishers Inc., 2001).

In the extended article that appears below historians Daudi Abe and Quintard Taylor explore the history of African Americans in Martin Luther King County from 1858 to 2014. They analyze the forces which encouraged people of African ancestry to settle in the county and discuss the rapid political, social, and economic changes that its black residents have faced since the first arrival, Manuel Lopes, came to the county in 1858.

With 119,801 people of African ancestry in a total population of 1,931,249 people, Martin Luther King, Jr. County is the most populous county in the state of Washington and is home to 29% of the state’s inhabitants and half of Washington’s black population.It is also the only county in the United States named after the 20th Century civil rights icon.

Osceola McKaine (3rd From Left) With Staff of his Supper Club
in Ghent, Belgium, ca. 1938

"Image Ownership: Public Domain"

Civil rightsactivist Osceola Enoch (“Mac”) McKaine was born in Sumter, South Carolina on December 17, 1892. In 1908, at the age of 16, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts where he attended classes at Boston College. Later he worked as associate editor of the Cambridge Advocate, a small black newspaper in the neighboring city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the 1912 presidential election, 20-year-old McKaine served as Secretary for the Colored Progressive League of New England.

Sources:

John Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation before the Civil
Rights Movement in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1995); James Felder, Civil Rights in South Carolina: From
Peaceful Protests to Groundbreaking Rulings (Gloucestershire, UK: The
History Press, 2012); Erik S. Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow: The
National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights (Chapel
Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

Anne Forrester Holloway was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Mali on November 6, 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. She was the first African American woman to hold that post.

Forrester was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 2, 1941. She attended public schools in Philadelphia but then transferred to a predominantly white school, Northfield Mount Hermon School, in Gill, Massachusetts, graduating June 1959. She graduated from Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont in 1963 and later received her master’s degree in African Studies at Howard University in 1968. Ms. Forrester’s doctoral work culminated with a 1975 degree from the Union Institute & University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Barbara M. Watson, businesswoman, lawyer, government executive, and diplomat, was born in New York City, New York on November 5, 1918. She was the daughter of James S. Watson, the first black judge elected in New York State, and his wife, Violet Lopez Watson, one of the founders of the National Council of Negro Women. Barbara M. Watson was the sister of James Lopez Watson and the cousin of General Colin L. Powell, the former U.S. Secretary of State.

After graduating from Barnard College in 1943, she took a job as an interviewer for the United Seamen's Service. In 1946, she founded a modeling agency and charm school, Barbara Watson Models, serving as the agency's executive director until 1956.

Walter Charles Carrington served as the United States Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Senegal from 1980 to 1981, and to Nigeria from 1993 to 1997. He married Arese Ukpoma, a Nigerian physician, and has lived in three Nigerian cities since the late 1960s.

Hamilton Hatter, educator and inventor, was the first principal of Bluefield Colored Institute in Bluefield, West Virginia. Hatter was born on April 24, 1856 in what was at that point Jefferson County, Virginia but which in 1863 became part of West Virginia. His parents Frank and Rebecca Hatter, his maternal grandparents, William and Lettie McCord, and his paternal grandparents, James Hatter and Matilda Hatter were at the time slaves and Hatter was born enslaved. Despite their status, the parents and grandparents supported Hatter in pursuing his later academic achievements.

Young Hatter attended school in his hometown, Charles Town, West Virginia. In addition to his regular school studies, he learned carpentry, house framing, and became a skilled mechanic who could construct machines and make plows. He continued this work into his adult life and in 1893 at the age of 37 received the patent for an intricate machine that improves the harvesting of Indian corn.

Ambassador William Beverly Carter is the first Ambassador-at-Large, and the second African American, to be appointed an ambassador by three Presidents. In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon appointed him ambassador to Tanzania. Four years later, President Gerald R. Ford named him ambassador to Liberia. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter appointed him U.S. Ambassador-at-Large.

Carter, born in 1921 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, was raised in nearby Philadelphia after the age of four. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in biology from Lincoln University in 1944, and his Law degree from Temple University in 1947. One of his Lincoln classmates was future Ghanaian head of state Kwame Nkrumah.

Lester Walton was a journalist, entertainment professional, and diplomat who promoted civil rights at home and abroad. Born Lester Aglar Walton on April 20, 1882 in St. Louis, Missouri, his early life was spent as a journalist. At the age of 20 in 1902, when he was hired by the St. Louis Star to be its golf writer and later its court reporter, he became the first black reporter to write for a white daily paper in St. Louis.

In 1906 Walton moved to New York City, New York and in 1908 he became theatrical editor for the New York Age, which was the largest black newspaper in the nation at the time. He remained at the Age until 1914. In 1912 he married Gladys Moore, the daughter of Fred Moore, publisher of the newspaper. The couple had two daughters.

Sources:

Jesse Mongrue, Liberia: America’s Footprint in Africa: Making the
cultural, social, and political connections (Bloomington, Indiana: Jesse
Mongrue, 2011); New York Public Library:
http://archives.nypl.org/scm/20633; Gerald Lyn Early, Ain’t But a Place:
An anthology of African American writings about St. Louis (St. Louis,
Missouri: The Missouri Historical Society Press, 1998).

Jerome R. Riley, medical doctor, author, political and civil rightsactivist, was born in St. Catharines, Canada West on March 17, 1840 to Isaac and Catherine Riley. His father and mother were runaway slaves who made their way from Perry County, Missouri, crossing over to Windsor and on to St. Catharines. In 1849 the family moved to the black settlement established at Buxton, Township of Raleigh, Canada by the Rev. William King. The Rileys were the first group of settlers in Buxton.

Congresswoman Alma Shealey Adams currently represents North Carolina’s 12th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. She is the 100th woman elected to that legislative body and the second African American woman, after Eva Clayton, to represent North Carolina in the U.S. Congress.

Edward Dudley was the first black American to lead a U.S. Mission abroad with the rank of Ambassador. Dudley was born on March 11, 1911 in South Boston, Virginia to Edward Richard and Nellie (Johnson) Dudley. After receiving his Bachelor’s degree from Johnson C. Smith College in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1932, Dudley briefly taught in a one-room Virginia school. He later moved to Washington, D.C., and enrolled in Howard University’s dentistry program. After deciding dentistry was not for him, Dudley moved to New York City, New York, eventually enrolling at St. John’s University where he earned a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree in 1941. While at St. John’s he served on its prestigious Law Review.

Sources:

The New York Times, February 11, 2005; “Black Chiefs of Mission Oral
History Project, Judge Edward Richard Dudley,” Phelps Stokes Fund, April
3, 1981; Pioneering African Americans in the Courts and the Legal
Community Past and Present (New York: Unified Court System of New York,
February 1992).

A Democratic member of the Nevada Senate, Kelvin Atkinson made history in April 2013 by becoming the fifth openly LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) member, and the first black gay member of the Nevada legislature. He revealed his sexual orientation during a legislative debate surrounding a gay marriage ban in the state.

Kelvin Atkinson was born on April 8, 1969 in Chicago, Illinois. He was one of three children. Kelvin’s mother was a unionized employee in a Chicago factory for more than 20 years, while his father was a railroad worker. Later, his father became the first in his family to graduate from college and then law school. He practiced as a criminal law attorney in Chicago until a former client murdered the elder Atkinson.

In 1979, Kelvin visited his fraternal grandparents in Los Angeles, California. While there, he fell in love with the city and asked his parents’ permission to stay there. Two years later his mother also relocated to Los Angeles.

Clementa Carlos "Clem" Pinckney, was an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) pastor, South Carolina State Senator, and rising star in the national Democratic Party. On June 17, 2015, he and eight local black leaders were assassinated in Charleston, South Carolina, during Bible study at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that Pinckney pastored.

Raised in the liberation theology tradition, Pinckney seamlessly intersected his faith with civil rights activism and public policy. Born on July 30, 1973, in Beaufort, South Carolina to John and Theopia (Stevenson) Pinckney, young Pinckney in 1987 followed in the path of his great-grandfather, Rev. Lorenzo Stevenson, and uncle, Rev. Levern Stevenson, and began apprentice preaching in St. John AME Church in Ridgeland, South Carolina. Four years later during his freshman year at the AME-run Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina, Pinckney became a preacher and freshman class president. He also gained valuable exposure to the South Carolina legislature as a page at the Statehouse. By Pinckney’s junior year, these experiences set the foundation for his becoming the palmetto state’s emerging star in electoral politics. While at Allen University Pinckney joined Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.

In the article below, Syracuse University historian Herbert Ruffin explores the rapid rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement as the most recent development in the ongoing struggle for racial and social justice in the United States.

Summary:

<i>In the article below, Syracuse University historian Herbert Ruffin
explores the rapid rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement as the most
recent development in the ongoing struggle for racial and social justice
in the United States.</i>

On November 8, 2016, Kamala Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate from California, becoming the second African American woman to sit in that body after Carol Mosely Braun of Illinois was elected to represent Illinois 24 years earlier in 1992. Before her election to the U.S. Senate, Harris served two-terms as the Attorney General of California. She was also the first black woman and first person of color to hold elective office as attorney general of any state.

Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California, on October 20, 1964 to Donald J. Harris, a Stanford University economics professor from Jamaica and Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a breast cancer specialist who immigrated from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Harris attended high school in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where her mother worked at McGill University Hospital.

Amelia Boynton Robinson (in Blue) at the 50th Anniversary of
the Selma to Montgomery March, 2015

"Image Ownership: Public Domain"

Although most known for widely-publicized photographs that depicted her assault during the 1965 Bloody Sundaycivil rights march in Selma, Alabama, Amelia Boynton Robinson lived a long life of civil rights activism in both Georgia and Alabama. Her critical role promoting African American voting rights in the South remains undervalued in published histories of the Civil Rights Movement, but Ava DuVernay’s 2014 Academy Award-nominated film Selma provided some renewed recognition on the eve of Boynton Robinson’s death.

Ambassador Daniel Yohannes with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
"Image Ownership: Public Domain"

Daniel W. Yohannes, a businessman, philanthropist, and diplomat, was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on September 22, 1952. He moved to the United States at age 17 as an exchange student in the 11th grade, attending high school in Los Angeles, California.

After working as a stock room clerk in a clothing store and later as a teller at a local bank in Los Angeles, he earned a B.A. in economics from Claremont McKenna College (1976) and a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) from Pepperdine University (1980).

Sources:

Official Bio, U.S. Mission to the OECD; Testimony before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, Daniel W. Yohannes, U.S.
Ambassador-Designate, Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, October 31, 2013; “Yohannes Takes Ambassador Post at Top
Global Policy Group,” Aldo Svaldi, The Denver Post, 4/27/2014.

Ertharin Cousin, a diplomat and leading advocate for ending global hunger, was born on May 12, 1957 in Chicago, Illinois to Anne Cousin, who worked in social services, and her husband Julius Cousin, who was a property owner and community development activist.

Cousin grew up on the West Side of Chicago. She received her B.A. (1979) from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her Juris Doctorate (1982) from the University of Georgia Law School, focusing on international law, and studying under former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

Upon completion of her law degree, Cousin returned to Chicago, where from 1983 to 1993 she held several positions including Assistant Attorney General and Western Regional Office Director for the Illinois Attorney General’s Office; Deputy Director at the Chicago Board of Ethics; and Director of Government Affairs for AT & T.

American Federation of Labor-Congress
of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)

"Image Ownership: Public Domain"

Labor leader Tefere Gebre fled Ethiopia at fourteen years of age, moved to the United States, and was elected years later, in 2013, executive vice president of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The third highest-ranking member of the largest labor federation in the United States, he is also the first immigrant (or political refugee) to serve as a national officer in the organization.

Born October 15, 1968, in Gondar, Ethiopia, Gebre’s father was a retired judge and his mother’s family had political connections to Emperor Haile Selassie. In 1974 a military coup deposed Selassie, resulting in a military dictatorship in which tens of thousands were tortured and murdered, now called the Red Terror. Consequently, Gebre and his relatives were forced to flee Ethiopia.

Georgia Montgomery was born on October 19, 1923, in Springfield, Kentucky. The only daughter of Ben Montgomery, an enameller for the American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Company, and Francis Walker’s nine children, Powers lived in a self-described “two-room shack in Jim Crow Town” in Springfield before the family moved to Louisville when she was a small child.

The Knoxville Race Riot in Knoxville, Tennessee, was one of several race riots that took place in the “Red Summer” of 1919. The so-called “Red Summer” of 1919 was a series of violent riots, predominantly whites against blacks, which lasted from May until October of that year and resulted in an estimated six hundred deaths across the nation.

The riot began on August 30, 1919, when an intruder entered the home of Bertie Lindsey, a twenty-seven-year-old white woman, and shot her while she was asleep in her bed. The only witness was Lindsey’s twenty-one-year-old cousin, Ora Smyth, who soon after the intruder left their Knoxville home, stealing a purse on his way out, ran next door to the house of a city policeman. One of the officers investigating the crime scene, Andy White, immediately accused Maurice Mays.

Odessa Cox is the principal founder of Los Angeles Southwest College, (LASC) which serves a predominantly black and brown community in South Central Los Angeles, California. Born Odessa Brown on June 8, 1922, in Whatley, Alabama, she was a second-generation community activist. Her father, Chester Lee Brown, was a union organizer for the International Worker’s Order (IWO) and later for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Along with Odessa’s mother, Alma Burroughs Brown, the couple imbued Odessa and her brothers, Lilton and Theodore, with a desire to help mankind and improve themselves through education.

BlackPast.org is an independent non-profit corporation 501(c)(3). It has no affiliation with the University of Washington. BlackPast.org is supported in part by a grant from Humanities Washington, a state-wide non-profit organization supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the state of Washington, and contributions from individuals and foundations.